U.S. Diplomat Urges Israelis to Start Following ‘Road Map’

A senior U.S. diplomat pressed Israel on Sunday to start complying with terms of a U.S.-backed peace plan, including the promised dismantling of illegal outposts of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The American envoy, William J. Burns, also expressed renewed concerns over the planned route of a heavily fortified security wall Israel is building in the West Bank, but the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gave no sign that Israel would agree to any significant changes in the barrier’s path and made no new promises concerning the outposts.

Burns’ talks with Israeli officials came a day after the U.S. envoy told Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Korei that the Palestinians must also live up to commitments, including moving against militant groups.

Early today, Israeli troops in the West Bank town of Ramallah staged house-to-house searches and rounded up dozens of suspected Hamas militants allegedly planning attacks on Israelis.

The latest American mediation bid, which appeared unlikely to yield any breakthroughs, came as Sharon faced increasing pressure from a high-profile unofficial peace initiative to be signed in Geneva today.

Public polls have indicated substantial support among Israelis for the so-called Geneva Accords, which envision the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders would roughly follow those that existed prior to the 1967 Middle East War.

Sharon has denounced the plan as subversion, saying its authors have no right to purport to speak for Israel. But the Bush administration has made a point of praising its Israeli and Palestinian architects, most of whom played prominent roles in past peace negotiations.

The accord, meant to serve as a blueprint for an officially negotiated treaty, calls for unprecedented concessions by both sides, and has thus attracted some bitter opposition.

Dozens of Palestinian delegates to the Geneva ceremony, departing Sunday from the Gaza Strip, were heckled and roughed up by demonstrators who taunted them with shouts of “Traitor!” and “Collaborator!”

Among Palestinians, opposition is being spearheaded by militant groups, who are infuriated by the accord’s near relinquishing of the “right of return” -- the long-standing demand that Palestinians who fled or were driven out during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence be allowed to reclaim homes and land inside what is now Israel.

Under the accord, which has received tacit approval but no formal endorsement from Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, Palestinian refugees and their descendants would be compensated, but only limited numbers of them would be allowed to settle inside Israel.

Among Israelis, some of the most vociferous opposition to the accord has come from settlers. The plan calls for removing most Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with territory in Israel to be exchanged for any large settlement blocs Israel would keep.

The negotiators also tackled the explosive subject of Jerusalem’s status, saying the two sides should share sovereignty of the city. The plan includes provisions for a multinational presence in one of the most sensitive sites, the hilltop compound within Jerusalem’s walled Old City known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

On the signing’s eve, plans for the elaborate ceremony dominated Israeli news coverage. All the news channels carried live reports of the 300-member Israeli delegation, made up of dignitaries, intellectuals and artists, arriving in Geneva.

The celebrity-heavy character of the event drew derision in some quarters. The right-leaning Jerusalem Post newspaper, in an editorial Sunday, called the signing ceremony a “festival of charades.” Also Sunday, an Israeli lawmaker, Yuri Stern of the pro-settlement National Union Party, made a failed last-minute bid to block Israeli signatories from leaving Israel to attend the plan’s launch. Stern cited an Israeli law that prevents the unauthorized negotiating of territorial concessions.

The accord’s authors said they were well aware the document had no legal weight, but said they hoped it would serve as the eventual basis for a peace agreement by the Israeli and Palestinian governments.

In the meantime, they said, they hoped the debate sparked by it signaled the end of a long period of political stagnation that has accompanied more than 38 months of violence.

“I see these debates we now have within both Palestinian and Israeli society as a correct, important and healthy thing,” said Yossi Beilin, the principal Israeli negotiating the pact.

At the moment, no fewer than six alternative peace proposals are in circulation, authored by Israeli interest groups, activists and political parties. “Everyone’s Got a Plan,” the mass-circulation daily Maariv said in a headline last week.

One probable reason for the popularity of the various alternative peace plans is a sense of deep frustration among the Israeli public over the seeming collapse of the American-backed “road map” peace plan soon after it was launched with great fanfare seven months ago.

Another factor in the Israeli public’s apparent willingness to weigh alternatives to Sharon’s policies is the relative calm that has prevailed lately. The last major Palestinian attack aimed at Israeli civilians was in early October -- a suicide bombing in the northern port city of Haifa that killed 21 people.

Even from within Sharon’s camp, the drumbeat of criticism has been steady in recent weeks. Justice Minister Tommy Lapid -- whose party is a member of Sharon’s governing coalition but has unveiled its own competing peace plan -- complained at a meeting of the Israeli Cabinet on Sunday that Israel was hurting its own cause by failing to carry out steps mandated in the first stages of the road map.

“I have been hearing for weeks now promises that the settlement outposts will be evacuated, but nothing happens,” Lapid said in what those present described as a heated outburst. “We are losing the battle for world public opinion, and there is a rift between us and the United States over this.”

Heading into talks with Israeli officials, Burns said it was “very important for all sides to live up to the obligations they have entered into in the road map ... and that certainly includes the issue of removing the unauthorized outposts.”

Korei, who met with Burns on Saturday in Jordan, said Sunday that the Palestinians would continue to appeal for U.S. help in reining in new construction in settlements and Israel’s building of its security barrier.

“We are willing to meet our obligations and are committed to implementing the road map,” Korei told reporters in Amman, Jordan’s capital.